It's nearly a year since Bernard Hogan-Howe took over as Metropolitan Police commissioner to the swooning approval of law-and-order politicians and press. Crime stats in Liverpool, where he'd been top cop before, looked tremendous and his talk of "total policing" excited visions of a "zero tolerance" approach to make "Dirty" Harry Callaghan look like a quivering equivocator. Here was the back-to-basics, "no nonsense" enforcer London needed after the riots. And so on.

Inevitably, the real Hogan-Howe quickly proved to be more nuanced than the imagined one. A report that he had chased and "nabbed" two bicycle thieves outside City Hall appears to have exemplified the initial triumph of news fantasy over fact, with Hogan-Howe reportedly "embarrassed and bemused" by the claim. One of his first public remarks was that stop-and-search, greatly increased since spring 2008 in line with the wishes of Boris Johnson, should be targeted more effectively. "Total policing," it emerged, was more about improving professionalism than imitating comic book action heroism.

Hogan-Howe has made an effort to meet Londoners since landing his job, addressing a series of public meetings across the capital. On Tuesday evening he went to Newham where he set out his objectives for the Met to an audience of around 150 at Stratford's Picturehouse cinema and took part in a question-and-answer session, which I chaired.

In his speech the commissioner outlined his "total policing" idea as a combination of focussed action against crime, care for victims and a high-quality culture at all levels of the organisation, guided by a solid team ethic. He anticipated completing a "strategic plan" for putting his vision into effect by the end of 2012, a task that will have to accommodate making savings of £500m over three years out of annual £3b budget - savings that were bound to mean the Met employing fewer people.

Even so, he intends to "improve, not reduce the neighbourhood policing model," finding "maybe" 2,000 officers for such duties. "We'll know by Christmas," he said. The Met's budget is set by the new Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, headed by serial "waste"-slasher and beat officer fan Deputy Greenhalgh. I picture the Sheffield-born cop with the law degree from Oxford and the "impatient visionary" of small state Conservatism crunching numbers together, and wonder what each makes of the other. (Any information from public-spirited citizens leading to a deeper knowledge of their relationship's chemistry would be treated in the strictest confidence.)

Three out of the twelve audience questions concerned stop-and-search, and a fourth made allegations of widespread abuse of power in Newham during the Olympics period. I expected a high proportion of challenges of this kind, though I'm told that at some such meetings it is higher.

A woman complained that her husband had been stopped "every damn day" by "the same officer" on his way home from work. A man said that he'd been pressured to provide his name and address following a search, and had difficulty persuading the officer concerned that he was not obliged to do so. A woman from the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) claimed that "hundreds of people" had reported "young men being illegally strip-searched in the back of vans," and wanted to know what the commissioner was going to do about it.

Hogan-Howe told NMP woman that if she gave him dates, names and places, "We'll do something about it." He confirmed that the man stopped and searched had been quite right about the law, and said in response to the woman who'd spoken about her husband that the category of people frequently stopped and searched despite never being found to have done anything wrong were his largest concern.

He also acknowledged that the recent history of largely random stop and searches, notably those conducted under anti-terrorism powers, had "left a legacy that we're all now having to work through," and that those conducted under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994) "were at a level I couldn't quite understand. I think it had become an automatic response to a stabbing or something else." That level has been reduced slightly, he said, and better targeting has produced better results: "Instead of a return of about 9 percent we've now got it up to 17 percent."

In a short interview after the meeting I asked him why he didn't drop the tactic altogether. After all, its effectiveness is hard to measure and any gains have to be weighed against the counter-productive resentment it creates, especially among black and Asian youths. "I've been open minded about that,' Hogan-Howe replied. "I've considered it. But I think at the moment I wouldn't. I think we should first try and improve it."

He hopes to greatly upgrade officer training in this area. In the next few months, he said, the Met will announce a new anti-knife crime initiative: a dedicated phone number and response officers, accompanied by a public information campaign. "My theory is that people know who carries knives, in the same way as they know who the burglars are and where stolen property goes, and sometimes they tell us."

I asked Hogan-Howe if the Met had learned any lessons from policing the Olympics. "I think it reminded all police officers to be on the front foot," he said. "To be friendly, to be approachable, to talk to children on so on. It's been an easier thing to do with the sorts of the crowds we've been dealing with - you know, football crowds are slightly different. But I think that professionalism and that spirit is something we need to take forward with confidence in the future."

I also invited him to define "frontline policing," a term deployed by politicians as if its meaning were self-evident, but used by police officers far more warily. He at first jokingly declined, saying the task was impossible but then said it should include all officers who both deal with the public and face an element of personal risk, while a wider definition could include others, such as those who handle phone calls. He seemed to take my point about politicians over-estimating their understanding of the term. "When you talk to them, they don't," he smiled.

It was the first time I'd met the commissioner. He clearly possesses the skills required to handle a moderately hostile crowd and generally keep out of trouble (he's a little too adept for some) and places transparency quite high on his public agenda at least. This a welcome principle, and it would be interesting to know how the complaints raised at the meeting are addressed. It will be interesting too, to see what his forthcoming strategic plan contains.

My impression of Hogan-Howe was of a shrewd and practical individual, ready to make reforms if they improve efficiency and quietly conscious that the Met's shortcomings are inconsistent with the "total policing" concept. He didn't strike me as a man for whom wining and dining journalists is a huge priority. Let's hope that these impressions are not wrong.